“It’s a long way between them two wastings.”
“Perhaps. I don’t know. We shall see.”
“Well, I must go and cook Hiram’s dinner. Good-by.” And she went out and down to her dugout.
“What do you think of her, Anne?” said Mrs. Lyndsay, as the maiden lady came out of her own room.
“I think her most interesting, and altogether a remarkable person.”
“A heart of gold!” said Mrs. Lyndsay. “You cannot imagine, Anne, what that woman was to me last summer.”
“I can,—I think I can now.” Mrs. Lyndsay went back to some household occupation, and Anne, returning to her hammock, lay thoughtfully watching the retreating pirogue and its capable guide, and smiling ever as was her habit.
Then she spoke aloud:
“That beats Marcus Aurelius. To have lost all her children, to have had sickness,—poverty, and not a wrinkle to record it all. That woman must have the self-contentment of a first-class angel. Ah, me!” And she turned again to the “Life of John, Lord Lawrence,” and was soon smiling over it, for in her heroic lives found glad and ready recognition.